For Your Approval

Lighten up, Al Qaeda!

Sometimes I try to be funny, but my wife Kate Zimmerman is a humour columnist, and actually is funny.

This is one of her latest pieces, which appear every Sunday in the North Shore News. It's about internal communication so I thought it would be of interest to readers of For Your Approval.

For more of Kate's work, visit her Web site or check out her blog, Kate of Late.

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SUBMISSION TO: Terror Times, the internal online Al Qaeda henchmen newsletter

FROM: Lexi Donnelly, Employee Number 6009

DATE: Spring, 2007

TOPIC: Introductory column from our new party planner

Lighten up! 

with Lexi Donnelly

Hola!

Allow me to introduce myself: I am Mr. bin Laden’s new party planner, Lexi! He has brought me in to raise Al Qaeda henchmen spirits and help you connect with each other. I’ll do that through festive gatherings I’ll be organizing at secret locations all over the world and announcing in this newsletter. As Mr. bin Laden says, “Above all, terrorism should be fun!”

To get that fun going, Mr. bin Laden asks that, in your future correspondence with him, you dot the “i” in “bin” with a happy face. “For what is a smile but a frown turned upside down?” he sagely asked me the other week, and I’d never heard it put quite so perfectly. No wonder you all revere him and do his bidding, no matter how nefarious. Ha ha!

Anyhoo, I’m old pals with Osama, as I call him when we’re face-to-veil. We met at Jeddah University, where I first noticed him through binoculars at a frosh week sock hop, leading the all-male conga line. He was a party animal back then -- he took charge of recruitment for one of the harder-to-fill fraternities and did a fabulous job. At graduation, he was headed into his family’s construction business and I was just taking on the role of comptroller at Enron; we joked at the time, from opposite ends of an enormous room, that someday our paths might cross again.

Flash forward to early 2007. I had found myself ready for a career switch after my decade of keeping Hollinger International on the straight and narrow when I saw Osama’s ad online, on Craigslist.   

I thought you’d get a kick out of hearing about my first encounter with our mutual boss last week. We met poolside at the Dubai Hilton. He wore sunglasses and a ballcap reading “Death to Whoever” over his turban to ensure that he would not be recognized. As you know, he is one of the world’s most wanted men, and not in the George Clooney way. (I wore a floor-length black sheath with my eyes showing, but you probably guessed that already! Ha!)

Osama began our conversation by saying that morale at Al Qaeda was at an all-time low. “I tell my henchmen they will receive their rewards in paradise, but this is not enough for some of them, especially the Gen-Xers,” he told me morosely over a cup of tea. “They complain of the dangers in the work and say their lunch and coffee breaks are ‘abbreviated.’”

“Osama, baby, look at yourself!” I advised him. “Seriously. Why the long face? How do you expect to lighten things up around here when everything with you is doom, gloom, and paradise later? Why no paradise now?”

“That’s not how we operate,” he said sternly.

So I pushed him in the water, and we were off to the races! He started to guffaw, the ball cap floated away, and he could barely hoist himself out of the pool with the weight of his sodden robe. “Ah! Zany hijinks! I had forgotten they still existed in this world gone mad,” he said, climbing up the ladder, wheezing with laughter.

“You know, if you weren’t so uptight, you could have pulled me into the pool with you,” I told him a bit flirtatiously, though I knew he had multiple wives. For half a second, I thought he’d do it. But then he remembered the same water would have touched both our flesh, or something like that, and politely excused himself to change robes. Half an hour and many solo cups of tea later, he reemerged with several grim-looking bodyguards who now stood between him and the pool.

“Where were we?” he asked pleasantly. “Oh, yes, how to inflame the spirits of my people so they will re-dedicate themselves to my mighty works.”

“What about a good old-fashioned hootenanny?” I asked. I never really run out of ideas.

“Men and women singing together?” he asked, his brow furrowing. One of the bodyguards began ostentatiously polishing a machete.

“No? How ’bout a rodeo?” I offered, picturing the men on one side and the women on the other side of an arena.

“Men interacting with cloven-hoofed animals?” Osama asked, his brow furrowing even deeper. I worried for him -- wrinkles were clearly in his future.

“What would you say to a Mexican fiesta, with piñatas resembling hated world leaders?” I proposed.

“Now you’re talking,” said Osama. “For party favours, automatic weapons that the guests can use to open the piñatas!”

In my experience, weapons and morale-boosting parties don’t mix, as I remember telling Lady Barbara Amiel Black when she showed up in a dangerously pointy bustier for one Hollinger shindig. So I offered an alternative.

“I was thinking of something more cheerful and upbeat -- a little dancing, a little spicy food, sombreros, a mariachi band.  Kids running around stoning chickens, cackling maniacally. Maybe we could even have a contest to see who has the best maniacal cackle!”

“I like it,” said Osama, trying out his own madman’s chuckle, which needed work.

So that’s what we’ve come up with -- the first of many prospective company parties. Keep watching this space for more!

Here are the gory -- or should I say glory? Ha ha! -- details.

You and your family (females and infidels excepted) are commanded to congregate in Cave 2060, You-Know-Where, on Sunday, April 1 at 11:30 a.m. for a Mexican fiesta, Al Qaeda style. Expect fiery tacos, soothing guacamole and displays of machismo such as eating the tequila worm without, of course, touching any tequila. Bring a change of robe as we’ll be importing a small ocean and you could get wet.
No need to reply. We know you’ll show. Of course I will not be there, but rest assured, a good time will be had by Al … Qaeda! Ha!

Delightful connections

One of the greatest things about writing a blog is that it makes so many unexpected and delightful connections with people from all over the world.

My most delightful connection yet happened a few weeks ago, when Ross Monaghan, a lecturer at the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deekin University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, connected with me through this blog. Ross is co-editor of an innovative podcast/blog called TheMediaPod, which describes itself as an "experimental and collaborative page written by public relations and journalism students and teaching staff at Deakin University."

The connection with Ross turned into a correspondence, which has now turned into a dream come true for me. Ross just let me know he has included my handbook, Writing and editing the Internal Publication, on the prescribed book list for his second semester unit, PR Writing & Tactics. There will be about 300 students in the unit.

When I wrote the book, I had a vague hope that it would some day be used as a teaching tool for communication students. Thanks, Ross, for the huge honour.

On a lighter note, here's another unexpected and delightful connection. Kommunicat, a blog based in Poland, recently featured a post in which the author, Kamil Borowiak, summarized (in Polish) a recent blog post from For Your Approval.

I was, of course, interested in how my words had been interpreted, so I ran Kamil's blog post through a free online translation site, with interesting results. Here's an excerpt from the translation:

"Here word is key community. Correction of mood caused is important challenge for communication in today's times pitiless reduction of cost, bureaucracy, deep change of brand value and very often bad management. They trust from one part of firm employee (staff) not up to the end."

Got a nice ring to it, don't it? Thanks, Kamil, for making the connection.

 

Good questions

It's an old saw - the man-on-the-street interview. The employee publication I'm currently editing has a regular "streeter" that features four employees who are asked the same question. The answers are kept to one or two sentences. I don't know if many online publications use it, but it's a great way to involve more employees in your print newsletter.

But some of my colleagues think it's hokey and boring. Ask a softball question and print all the perky, positive, meaningless answers. Who needs that?

Everyone, as far as I'm concerned. From my point of view the questions and the answers are secondary to the fact that we're showcasing front-line people, showing their faces and listening to their voices, whatever they have to say.

But I took the point. It does matter, of course. The better the questions and the answers, the more interesting and readable they are, and the better a newsletter it will be. So we brainstormed and came up with some very good questions, some harder than others, but all interesting:

What keeps you working at this company?

How are you involved in your community?

What leadership quality do you most admire/value?

How do you handle change in the workplace?

What is the best safety advice you've ever heard?

Who has been a mentor to you at our company, and why?

What could our leaders do to be more connected with employees?

What is one thing that would make your job easier?

What is the biggest challenge facing our company today?

What keeps you awake at night?

How do you make sure you balance work and home life?

What is the best professional development session you've ever
participated in?

What have you personally done to make a new employee feel welcome?

If you had one piece of advice for someone graduating from high school
this spring, what would it be?

What is the most exciting thing you've ever done?

How will our lives be different ten years from now?

Good questions, all, and I look forward to publishing the answers.

Anyone else doing this? Is it worthwhile? Is not a blog like this just the grandchild of the original streeter, which was an attempt to have a proto-conversation with readers?

Managing editor wanted

My longtime client and former employer, Suncor Energy, is looking for a managing editor for its new company-wide employee publication.

This is a fabulous (and rare) opportunity for a senior editor who is looking for an exciting challenge. Suncor is a great company, going through lots of changes.

Please check out the job description and forward the link to anyone you know who might be interested.

It's awards season

Call me an aging communication nerd. I passed up watching the Oscars last Sunday to judge the Intranet feature and internal blog categories for the Ragan Recognition Awards.

I also spent a couple of evenings last week helping judge the publications category of IABC’s Gold Quill Awards. (It's heartening to note that the publications category still draws the most entries -- our group in Vancouver had over 120 publications to judge.)

I always jump at the chance to be a judge in communication award competitions. It’s a rare chance to take a close look at the work of other communicators – to see the kinds of challenges they’re facing and the solutions they come up with. I always learn something from my experience, and this awards season is no exception.  So here, in no particular order, are some observations:

1. When it comes to internal blogging, we’re still very much in the early days. Ragan received only two entries in the new category. They were both impressive and engaging, but also rudimentary and experimental. The communicators who put them together knew they would be learning as they went, and the blogs they initiated, although rough around the edges, reflected a positive, pioneering spirit. One of the measures of a good blog is whether it generates lots of comments, and by that measure the ones I judged were great, if somewhat clunky, successes. Interestingly, both blogs were written by communication staff members and not rank and file employees or executives. Both were quite transparent attempts to simply start a conversation by putting issues on the table and then inviting readers to comment. And comment they did, with some posts attracting close to 100 comments. Some good lessons for anyone considering starting an internal blog:

• Initially at least, expect a flurry of comments that don’t necessarily stay on the subject being discussed.
• You may also get a certain amount of bitching and complaining as people take advantage of having a new internal forum to voice their irritations with their employer and their workplace.
• Allowing anonymous postings tends to encourage comments, but here’s a good rule – if you’re allowing a mix of attributed and anonymous comments, allow immediate, unedited posts for those willing to identify themselves, and moderated posts for anonymous contributors.
• The blogs I saw had effective self-regulation. Comments that are out of line (rude, unreasonable, confusing) get shouted down, with different degrees of politeness, by other readers.
• Set out clear, sensible guidelines when you start the blog so everyone knows what to expect, and what’s expected of them one of the blogs I judged did a great job of laying out the ground rules.

2. There’s a lot of great writing on Intranets, but how much of it is being read? I was amazed by how much some of the writers could get done in a short Intranet feature. At this point Intranets are relatively mature channel and the entries I saw were quite effective in telling interesting and relevant stories. My biggest concern is that so much good work gets done on these things, and no one is reading them. If you’re trying to keep your Intranet content “fresh,” that means you’re highlighting articles on your portal for only a day or two, or sometimes a week, before they’re buried by other content and then relegated to some kind of archive. Readers of this blog know I’m passionate about this: it’s a crying shame that so many companies have abandoned the extremely effective print medium, which is still one of the best ways of sharing information with employees and creating a sense of community at work.

3. You don’t have to look good to be good. I’m big on using great design and compelling photos to help get information across to employees. And I know there’s a disheartening amount of really crappy looking publications out there, with tiny photos, bad typography, amateurish writing and so on. But one of the publications that I judged looked about as bad as a desktop published newsletter can look – but it succeeded because it had clear communication goals and delivered on them. On a shoestring budget, an editor who had to do triple duty as writer, photographer and layout person managed to strike a chord with readers and influence bottom-line results.

4. Anecdotes and quotes are perhaps the two most powerful things in written communication. Stories that have them, sing. Those that don’t, sink. I was reminded of this with every item I judged. There’s really no better way to make an article come alive than to focus on an individual who is experiencing change first hand. Tell that personal story, using the subject’s own words, and you will be a better communicator.

Baby's first year

I posted the first entry in this blog one year ago today. Woo hoo!

With 64 posts, 145 comments, four trackbacks and 11,225 page views under my belt, I certainly can't claim to be the most popular blog on the Internet.

But (sour grapes aside) it really doesn't matter how many visitors you have; it's whether the blog means something to you and your readers. And I can tell from watching the traffic, and seeing the people who link to my blog, and reading the excellent comments and conversations that we've had over the past year, that this blog does mean something to you.

So thanks. It's been fun so far.

Thank you David, for showing me how a great blog is written.

Thank you Shel, for telling me I should have my own blog. You were right.

Thank you Shel and Neville, for For Immediate Release. Your crazy hobby keeps me interested and engaged in the new world of social media.

Thank you, Ricky, for leading the way into the blogosphere and sharing your adventures with the world.

Thank you Craig and John, for being there with great comments and helpful suggestions.

Thank you Kate, for being such an understanding wife, and such a superb and funny writer.

And, finally, thanks to everyone who ever clicked their way to this tiny corner of the blogosphere.

So here's to the second year of For Your Approval.

I'm glad you approve of this blog, and I look forward to earning that approval and carrying on the conversation in the months ahead.

The Red Pen Diaries #6

I love the smell of fresh ink in the morning. It smells like...victory.

After a solid month of heavy slogging on the part of a great team, the first issue of The Big Link is out. We met our deadline and produced a 16-page, tabloid, sized first edition. For an editor, nothing compares to smelling, touching and thumbing through a new publication. There's something magic about it that nothing electronic can match (for me, anyway).

Of course, it ain't perfect. As the old Russian saying goes, the first pancake is always burnt. But we caught almost all the typos, and all the photos are in the right place, and there were no glaring mistakes. And the client is happy.

And now I must begin planning my exit. I was contracted as managing editor to help launch the publication, and now I'm going to help manage the transition to whoever they hire to take the reins. This morning I was asked to develop a list of skills needed for the job. While it's fresh in my mind I thought I'd share it with you. (By the way, I don't have all these skills, and don't know who does, but it's something to aim for if you're looking for a good editor for your employee publication.)

Skills needed for managing editor

• Editorial skills – ability to edit and rewrite stories to conform to a journalistic style; knowledge of what constitutes good news and feature photography; and the ability to coach, motivate and inspire writers, photographers and graphic artists to do their best work
• Writing skills – ability to write clear, concise stories, headlines, captions, late-breaking news (and anything else), with impact, integrity and style
• Organizational skills – ability to stay organized, keep track of complex approvals, deal with conflicting priorities and synthesize a huge amount of information from many sources and have it all come together and make sense on the page
• News judgment – knows which stories will be of interest to the reader; how to structure stories for maximum impact; and how to anticipate where the news is going to be coming from
• Tact and diplomacy – ability to disagree without offending, offer constructive criticism without discouraging people, broker compromises in ways that make none of the parties feel they’ve lost a battle
• A tolerance for high-pressure situations, uncertainty and chaos under tight, uncompromising deadlines – ability to keep one’s cool in a crisis and help others do the same; an acceptance of the uncomfortable realities, difficult compromises and odd hours inherent in managing a corporate publication
• Strategic communications planning – knowledge of the essentials of strategic communications, including issue identification, key message development, audience segmentation, tactical planning and execution and measurement
• Industry understanding – knowledge of the industry, including history, technology, industry issues and trends

I suppose you could also add to that list an understanding of how print fits in with other communication channels, as well as a high tolerance for alcohol consumption. But I think that about covers it, no?

Workplace journalism: The Story Board

I got a note the other day from Barry Nelson, a veteran communicator who has founded a new employee communications service that aims to fill a gap in what Barry calls "an overlooked category of content that I believe our fellow practitioners ought to be reporting in their internal media."

With Barry's permission, I'm excerpting from his note:

Here's my message: Employee communicators, striving to be strategic and avoid information overload, now focus pretty narrowly on covering their companies' major decisions, initiatives and results, plus a smattering of administrative or operational details that people need to do their jobs. (Of course the better programs also minister in some way to the needs of supervisors in their communication role.) And that's all fine.

Except that what sells papers (and books and magazines) in the external world is people's need for self-help tips about confronting the daily challenges of ... looking and feeling better, managing a relationship, grooving a golf swing, whatever. And in workplaces worldwide, you have millions of people going through pretty much similar challenges, such as coping with overload, getting along with co-workers and the boss, adjusting to change, deciding whether to invest discretionary time and effort (and how much) in the employer's cause, and so on.

These are personal concerns, off the radar of the typical employee communication agenda. But of course how they're decided, and how sympathetic and helpful an employer is to the plight of employees pondering them, can have as great an impact on engagement and retention and productivity as practically any of the "strategic" issues that hog our attention.

My new business is devoted to helping communicators address these kinds of employee concerns -- putting them in proper global context, and providing coping tips from both third-party experts and helpful voices inside each client company. You can check us out at thestoryboard-llc.com. And I hope you might invite your readers to do the same.

I like the idea of a service that provides content that is of interest to employees but might not be directly tied to the business. It's all about recognizing that people have a life outside of work, and doing things that enrich that life in some way. This shouldn't be the main focus of an employee publication, but it's a content option worth considering, especially when you can customize it to suit your local audience.

There are other similar ideas/services that come to mind, including Ragan Communications' First Draft, a kind of cut-and-paste service for busy editors. I talked with Barry on the phone and he says his concept differs in that he's taking a more journalistic approach, plus he's also offering accompanying managers' meeting guides, sidebars and illustrations.

Readers, do you think Barry's on to something here? Any suggestions for how he might improve or change his approach?

The Red Pen Diaries #5

The proverbial meatgrinder is churning at full speed as I enter the home stretch in the race to launch the new, company-wide publication at BigCo. Stories are streaming in from all the business units  and I'm struggling to compile it all into a cohesive package for the designer. It's three days from the deadline and I don't have a decent cover photo yet, and the cover story is in its fifth draft and hasn't stabilized.

It's a truism that launching a new publication takes five times longer than it will when things are running smoothly. Every single thing needs to be built from scratch -- naming conventions for files and photos, the format of the charts and tables, the contents of each section, the look of the standing heads, the information on the masthead, and on and on in an endless stream of details that threatens to drown me at every turn.

The new publication has been dubbed The Big Link because it's meant to link everyone in the historically decentralized organization together. It replaces six local newsletters, each of which had different styles, different contents, different audiences. Now The Link has to serve them all, including the needs of the newly strengthened corporate center.

One example of the challenge: some of the newsletters published names of new hires, service anniversaries and retirements. Some didn't. Now I have to decide whether to scrap these things or put together company wide lists and organize them according to business units.

Pension and benefits information also varies, depending on which country the business unit is in and whether its workforce is unionized or not, so careful labelling is necessary to prevent misinterpretation. And so on.

But I feel totally energized by all this. I love being in the shit, as it were. Because a true editor loves nothing better than a big edition to put out with an impossible deadline to meet.

The year ahead

Here’s my list of predictions for 2007. Forgive me that the first five aren’t very optimistic as they foresee the continuance of several negative trends, but at least I get them out of the way at the beginning.

1. The stability of the modern workplace, and the commitment of the people in it, will continue to decline as baby boomers, the last of the truly loyal employees, retire in droves and the market for skilled workers heats up.

2. “Employee engagement” will continue to be the Holy Grail for many organizations as their leaders try to connect with the new generation of disenchanted employees, whose loyalty will reach new lows in 2007. At least one new major business scandal will erupt, adding fuel to this trend.

3. Internal communicators will continue to shower information upon disengaged employees, hoping it will wash away their cynicism and distrust, but it will only drown them in data, impede their actions and add to their alienation.

4. The rise of megapixel digital cameras will continue to erode the quality of photography in employee publications.

5. Management’s reluctance to communicate openly with employees will continue as risk-averse leaders ignore changing workplace values.

6. For Immediate Release, the seminal podcast about “the intersection between communications and technology,” will produce another 50 shows as co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz push our profession into the new millennium (thanks for everything, guys). As a side prediction, Shel will get a part-time job at Circuit City to feed his hi-tech gear addiction.

7. Employers, realizing that disengagement is a threat to competitiveness, will increase their investment in the people side of their business, including employee communications.

8. Under pressure to do something different and innovative, more employee communicators will turn to social media to reach out to employees and invite them into a conversation about their companies, their jobs, their customers and their collective future.

9. In 2007, this trend will produce as many failures as successes, as some communicators jump on the bandwagon and use the new technologies just because they’re new and sexy, to the detriment of effective communication.

10. Finally, and most optimistically, in 2007 employee communicators will be appreciated by their leaders, co-workers and employee audiences like never before.

Happy New Year! I hope it’s a great one for you, and the people you love.

And one more thing. If you're a regular reader of this blog, thanks for sticking with me, and if you're new, thanks for dropping by.